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McCain, Graham Must Acknowledge Threat of Muslim Brotherhood

As the Benghazi story played out in the media, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham emerged as two Republican voices spearheading the fight against the White House’s ridiculous narrative. As the Muslim Brotherhood gains power in Egypt, a serious examination of the Brotherhood is increasingly critical to our national security.

Senators McCain and Graham led the charge against Rep. Bachmann this past summer when the Minnesota Congresswomen raised concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence and more specifically about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide Huma Abedin and her connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. At the time, McCain railed against Bachmann on the Senate floor:

These sinister accusations rest solely on a few unspecified and unsubstantiated associations of members of Huma’s family, none of which have been shown to harm or threaten the United States in any way. These attacks have no logic, no basis, and no merit and they need to stop. They need to stop now.

Actually, the accusations were both specific and substantiated. Rep. Bachmann responded by saying she was concerned about “the serious national security concerns I had and ask[ed] for answers to questions regarding the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical groups’ access to top Obama administration officials.” Senator Lindsey Graham also attacked Bachmann, saying:

The person saying it (Michele Bachmann) has no idea what they’re saying because they’ve never met (Huma.) She is about as far away from the Muslim Brotherhood view of women and ideology as you possibly could get. She’s a very modern woman in every sense of the word, and people who say these things are really doing her a disservice because they don’t know what they’re talking about.

However, Bachmann’s accusation was never that Huma Abedin wasn’t “a modern woman.” It was that Ms. Abedin had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, a fact that neither McCain nor Graham can dispute.

Two months later, on September 11th, multiple violent assaults took place on Americans in Egypt and Benghazi, Libya. As we now know, the Obama administration covered up the true nature of the attacks and blamed it on a YouTube video.

The disturbing truth is that the reason for the repeated mentions of the video may be the Obama administration’s longstanding work to help aid the Muslim Brotherhood in censoring critics of Islam. About a week after the 9/11 attack in Benghazi, an event happened that went largely unnoticed in the election-focused United States when a French magazine published cartoons of Muhammad that fueled more Islamist ire:

Essam Erian, acting head of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, told Reuters: “We reject and condemn the French cartoons that dishonor the Prophet and we condemn any action that defames the sacred according to people’s beliefs.”Calling for a U.N. treaty against insulting religion, he added: “We condemn violence and say that peaceful protests are a right for everyone. I hope there will be a popular western and French reaction condemning this.”

That U.N. treaty against ‘insulting religion’ that the head of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood called for is something that the Obama administration has been actively working with Islamist nations to ratify for years. As Professor Jonathon Turley has pointed out:

…the Administration is legitimating the prosecution of religious critics and dissidents with this initiative. It should immediately end its support for the standard and reaffirm the protection of religious critics in the United States.

Senator McCain and Senator Graham aren’t telling the American people that the Obama administration used the Benghazi attack to promote the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda of silencing critics of Islam. That appears to be the purpose of President Obama’s speech to the United Nations on October 25th, where it’s no coincidence that he mentioned the YouTube video six times. The idea that the Obama administration is working to silence critics of Islam isn’t just a theory; the Obama administration put this affront to American First Amendment freedoms into action after Benghazi.

Hillary Clinton told Charles Woods, the father of slain ex-SEAL and Benghazi hero Ty Woods, that the Obama administration would “make sure the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.” This wasn’t just bluster. The filmmaker was arrested and sentenced to a year in prison, just as Secretary of State Clinton said would happen. It’s one of the most outrageous acts in the entire Benghazi affair and indicates a Muslim Brotherhood influence on U.S. Policy, which is exactly what Rep. Bachmann was concerned about:

The Muslim Brotherhood is not shy about their call for jihad against the United States. We seek answers through these letters because we will not tolerate this group and its affiliates holding positions of power in our government or influencing our nation’s leaders.

Rep. Bachmann was right. Her concerns were not just real, but prescient. Senator Graham and McCain attacked the clear truth that the Muslim Brotherhood is influencing our nation’s leaders. The truth was evident at the time. After Benghazi, it’s glaring.